Today we’d like to introduce you to Miller Morris.
Hi Miller, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My journey began with a career in public health. I’m a women’s health researcher, and I was working for Lwala Community Alliance, an organization based in rural Kenya but with strong ties to Vanderbilt and Nashville, when the idea for Comma first came to me. I saw girls dropping out of school because they didn’t have access to adequate period products that worked with their local sanitation and waste management systems—and girls’ retention in school is one of the biggest predictors of individual and community health we’ve studied. This experience was a catalyst: it pushed me to think outside the box about what period care could be, and also how to create a sustainable business model that could give back to the communities that needed it most. I come from a healthcare-focused family, and this background, paired with my global health work at small NGOs and my time at the World Health Organization (WHO), all shaped my path to taking innovative approaches to women’s health.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Like most rewarding work, my experience building Comma has not been easy. It has, however, been generative: I’m at a stage of entrepreneurship where I feel like Comma pours into me as much as I pour into it.
Some challenges we’ve encountered are unique to our space. Women’s health has been neglected, underfunded, and misunderstood for centuries. This is especially true of menstrual health, which, despite being a biological process 51% of the world experiences for decades of their life, is at best treated as a consumer category and at worst as a shameful secret. Outside of our industry, we see major challenges in the startup space generally. Women founders received less than 2% of venture capital funding in 2023, despite women founders seeing 35% better returns than their male counterparts. Working in public health taught me capital efficiency and built my resilience as a leader and operator. My background taught me how to innovate solutions that are multipliers, and has kept the mission as our North Star, which helps me stay focused despite the obstacles.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Comma is an integrated period care company that brings personalized and predictive care to reproductive health. Our flagship product is Sara™, a hyper-secure period tracking app that transforms menstrual data into meaningful care for its users. What sets us apart is our commitment to security: Sara is the only period tracking app built to handle menstrual data with practices benchmarked to HIPAA. Because of this, Comma can harness the power of your period for preventative health. We specialize in helping users uncover cycle patterns and detect conditions like PCOS to shorten the diagnostic journey, and we’re developing at-home tests to add to our personalized health solutions. We are most proud of our mission to accelerate access, improve early detection, and put periods within the critical healthcare conversation.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
Women’s health and the menstrual care industry are due for a major transformation. We need to move beyond treating it as a consumer or “wellness” market and start treating it as a true part of healthcare. A lot of women’s health clinicians consider menstruation to be a vital sign, and we’ve seen what a remarkable indicator and diagnostic it can be for plenty of endometrial diseases and other disorders. Given its clinical meaning, period data should be treated with the same standards of rigor, privacy, and security as other protected healthcare information. We’re redefining period care as a space of personalized and predictive medicine powered by cycle tracking and at-home diagnostics.
At Comma, we’re built to handle menstrual data with security practices benchmarked to HIPAA. We see strong data security as the foundation of trust and the key to connecting seamlessly with the broader healthcare system. AI is already accelerating this change, helping improve access and shorten the long diagnostic journey for conditions like endometriosis and PCOS that have gone undiagnosed for years. The future is about startups and healthcare working together to close the gaps that still leave too many people without the care they deserve.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://yourcomma.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourcomma__/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miller-morris/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@miller__morris
